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An Engineer's Approach to the Subject of Santa
NO KNOWN SPECIES OF REINDEER CAN FLY. But there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer, which reindeer only Santa has ever seen. *THERE ARE 2 BILLION CHILDREN (PERSONS UNDER 18) IN THE WORLD. But, since Santa doesn't appear to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces his world load to 15% of the total - 378m. according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3* children per household, that's 91.8m. homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each home. *'SANTA' HAS 31 HOURS OF X-MAS TO WORK WITH, THANKS TO THE DIFFERENT TIME ZONES and the rotation of the Earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems most logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to say for each 'Christian' household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining [resents under the tree, eat whatever snack have been left, get back up the chimney, get back in the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of the 91.8 m. stops are evenly distributed around the earth, (which we know to be false, but for purposes of calculation will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75* million miles, not counting the stops to do what most of us must do at least every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - a conventional reindeer conventional can run tops, 15 miles per hour. *The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium lego set, (2 pds.) the sled is carrying 321,000 tons, not counting Santa who is invariably described as overweight. On land, a conventional reindeer can carry no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that 'flying reindeer' (see pt. #1) could pull 10 times the normal amount we cannot do the job with even 8 or 9. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh, to 353,430 tons. Again for comparison this is 4 times the weight of Queen Elizabeth. *353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering earth's atmosphere. The lead reindeer will absorb 14,3 quintillion joules of energy per second, each. In short they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meantime will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.6 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa, (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force. ' IN CONCLUSION: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Xmas eve, he's dead now. "' Category:Holiday Humor